274 



The Plant World, 



and venerrijus snakes and air alive with deadly mosquitoes, 

 This, however, is far from the truth. Perhaps the Everglades 

 can be described best as low prairies, submerged for most of the 

 year. They are free from trees except as noted below. Their 

 level is from a few centimeters to as much as half a meter below 

 that of the pine lands. The soil is frequently a sort of a marl, 

 although vast areas have sandy and others muck soil. Not 

 rarely does the limestone crop out as in the pine and hammock 



Fig. 2. A hammock in the Everglades. In the distance pine woods of the upland. 



land. The vegetation consists largely of Monocotyledonous 

 plants, chiefly sedges, grasses, rushes, Eriocaulaceae, etc. Or- 

 chids occur also in the parts not deeply submerged. The vege- 

 tation is not so strange to the botanists from the North as is 

 that of the hammocks or even the pine woods. To be sure 

 Carex will be missed but there will be f 3und in its place many 

 other sedges such as Selena, Rhynchospora, Dichromena and all 

 too manv species of Cyperus. Peltandra virginica will remind 



